Utopia, you are standing in it!

This article in The Atlantic discusses a dilemma that shouldn’t exist in a rational world—a world without faith and, in this case, without the attendant and ridiculous notion that menstruating women are unclean. Read and weep:

For many Orthodox Jews, a menstruating woman is described as being in the state of “niddah“, which means that she’s sexually impure. As Green says in her article above,

Each month, when they get their period, some Jewish women observe a time of niddah, or ritual impurity. As long as they’re bleeding, and often for at least a week afterward, they can’t have sex with their partner. Many couples won’t hug or kiss, sleep in the same bed, or even pass objects to each other. Under any circumstances, this can be challenging to maintain. Imagine what it’s like under quarantine.

She remains “impure” until her period ends and she immerses herself in a…

Power them up with cheap & reliable coal-fired electricity.

A Chinese virus has taken up where Australia’s suicidal energy policies left off; crushing the entire economy, rather than just energy hungry industries, like manufacturing and mineral processing. Well, in truth, it’s the political reaction to COVID-19 that’s done the damage, rather than the pathogen itself.

Having destroyed the hospitality and tourism sectors overnight, throttled air transport and eliminated the free movement of Australians between states, talk has already turned to what comes next.

With shortages of medical equipment and machinery, one notion that’s taken hold is the idea that Australia could, once again, become a manufacturing powerhouse. The concept is being branded as “self-reliance” or “self-sufficiency”. Ignoring the fact that Australia’s manufacturing sector has been practically destroyed over the last decade, not least due to the fact that Australian businesses pay among the world’s highest power prices, thanks to an…

In this post I argue, with reference to Privacy International, that the nature of legislation as a speech act entails that the tension between parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law is not as profound as is often thought.

In Privacy International the Supreme Court was tasked with interpreting s.67(8) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, which provides:

Except to such extent as the Secretary of State may by order otherwise provide, determinations, awards, orders and other decisions of the Tribunal (including decisions as to whether they have jurisdiction) shall not be subject to appeal or be liable to be questioned in any court.

My aim here is not to argue in favour of a particular interpretation of s.67(8), but rather to explore some of the ‘meta-issues’ thrown up by Privacy International, specifically concerning legislative intention and parliamentary sovereignty. I shall stress a point that…

Commenting on the New Zealand approach to coronavirus Aussie Prime Minister Morrison told Britain’s Financial Times, “This is not seen to be in our view a wise trade-off in how we manage the two crises we are facing: the economic one and, of course, the health one.”

Now it was established in previous two posts that the Hornsdale Power Reserve did surprisingly little to avert a frequency drop caused by a 560 MW capacity loss (contrary to what was suggested in the RenewEconomy article), the focus of this post will be on how the message was brought. Knowing how little the battery actually did, then how on earth could Giles Parkinson paint it as if something extraordinary had happened? This post will explain how this is done.

Let’s start with the title:

Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units after Loy Yang trips

The proverb is “Generals are always fighting the last war,” and its origin is uncertain. One possibility is a quote from Winston Churchill: “It is a joke in Britain to say that the War Office is always preparing for the last war.” 1948 Winston S. Churchill _The Second World War_ I (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985) 426:

Konrad Lorenz demonstrated how imprinting works upon animal behavior, while military historians have reported how powerfully human social animals are influenced by the past and instilled lessons from others.

Austria – 20th century. Animal behaviourist Konrad Lorenz and mallard goslings

Which brings me to these reflections about the current WuHanFlu outbreak. The chart at the top summarizes our received epidemiological wisdom about the danger of viruses according to the dimensions of deadliness and contagiousness. As the diagram shows, extremely deadly viruses tend to kill their hosts too quickly to be transmitted widely. Conversely, a…

Economist Bryan Caplan debated another socialist recently on capitalism vs. socialism. He posted his opening statement here. In that blog post he linked to his previous debates on socialism and I noticed he debated Elizabeth Bruenig two years ago. That name is familiar to me (or actually not that familiar because she got married and changed her last name) because years ago I engaged her in a debate in the comments section of her blog (if I recall correctly). Unfortunately, she blocked me ¯_(ツ)_/¯. She was coming at socialism from a Christian perspective and it lead me to write this blog post: Was Jesus A Socialist?